the institutions of nafta - scielo méxico · as nafta matured, part of this debate focused on the...

ABSTRACTSince NAFTA was concluded in 1994, talk of next steps in North American integra-tion has been a frequent topic of scholarly and public debate. At the heart of thatdebate reside questions of whether to deepen or expand, reinvigorate or consoli-date the agreement. As NAFTA matured, part of this debate focused on the agree-ment’s relative degree of institutionalization. These issues received renewedattention in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the UnitedStates. Drawing upon the insights of the so-called new institutional economics, thispaper argues that NAFTA is, in its entirety, a set of institutions governing North Amer-ican economic relations. As the post-9/11 debate over the next steps in NorthAmerica moves forward, policy makers would be wise to consider how modifi-cations to these institutional structures are shaping incentives, including the waywe think about economic relations in North America.

Key words: economic institutions, NAFTA, integration, reasoning

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NORTEAMÉRICA. Year 3, number 2, July-December 2008

The Institutions of NAFTA

GREG ANDERSON*

* Department of Political Science, University of Alberta. [email protected]

INTRODUCTION

On January 1, 1994, Zapatista rebels launched a rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico, in-tended to coincide with the implementation of the North American Free TradeAgreement (NAFTA). New Year’s Day 2008 saw a similar –albeit much less violent–set of protests as Mexican farmers blocked several entry points at U.S. border cross-ings. Why? January 1 was the date final tariff reductions under NAFTA were to bephased in, mainly on agricultural goods. After nearly 15 years, NAFTA had been fullyimplemented. While the protests in Mexico were the bookends of the implementa-tion phase, the controversy over NAFTA has by no means been restricted to Mexico,nor has it been limited to the implementation phase. Debate over the impact, mean-ing, and implications of NAFTA can be found nearly everywhere, and has even fea-tured prominently in U.S. presidential politics.

Moreover, the debate over the economic, social, and political consequencesamong social scientists and the public at large has tended to deteriorate into starklycontrasting and uneven sets of economic, social, and political evidence over whichthere has been no shortage of debate (Wise and Studer, 2008; Courchene, Savoie andSchwanen, eds., 2005; Weintraub, ed., 2004; Wise, 1998).

As pointed out by Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott, much of what was prom-ised from NAFTA was impossible from a free trade agreement and much of what hasoccurred since NAFTA cannot be directly tied to policy changes NAFTA facilitated(Hufbauer and Schott, 2005: 4). NAFTA’s political supporters oversold –and contin-ue to oversell– the benefits while detractors overstated –and continue to overstate–its negative consequences.

While the public policy debate over NAFTA, and the larger benefits of trade lib-eralization will undoubtedly continue, scholars have largely ignored a key area ofinvestigation that could go some distance toward arbitrating the debate: institu-tions. The ink on NAFTA had hardly dried when discussions of the next phases ofNorth American integration began (Weintraub, 1994). What would North Americabeyond NAFTA look like? What were the merits of “broadening” versus “deepen-ing”? Should membership be expanded or consolidated? As NAFTA matured after1994 and its operation was evaluated, some cited the comparative lack of “institu-tionalization” in the NAFTA region as a major reason for its perceived failures in areassuch as economic dislocation, dispute settlement, or the environment (Anderson,2006; Pastor, 2001).

Yet, in all of this debate over NAFTA’s effects, proposals for “fixing” the agree-ment, or speculation over what the “next phase” should look like, there is seldoman explicit consideration of institutions beyond the standard economic theory of

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GREG ANDERSONNORTEAMÉRICA

integration (see Robson, 2004; Goldfarb, 2003; Dobson, 2002; Eichengreen, 1996).Similarly, proposals for “fixing” NAFTA or moving toward the “next phase” in NorthAmerican integration do not consider the profound ways in which even subtlealterations to international trade rules can dramatically alter incentives for political,social, and economic activity. Scholars from a variety of disciplines might agree thatinstitutions matter, but conceptual ambiguity over the definition of institutions hasthwarted the application of a particular view of institutions to the analysis of inter-national trade. As its point of departure, this article begins with Douglass Northwho said: “Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure political,economic, and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions,taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions,laws, and property rights)” (North, 1991: 97-98).

Under this definition, a whole range of social, political, and economic phe-nomena could be the result of institutions. One of the broad claims made by thispaper is that NAFTA is, in its entirety, a set of institutions in the tradition of DouglassNorth. NAFTA has come to represent many things to many people. However, at bot-tom it is a set of institutions that have not only facilitated growth in trade andinvestment flows, but has also shaped the way we have come to think about eco-nomic, social and political, relations in North America.

As North also reminds us, productivity depends upon specialization and withit increased complexity in economic exchange, fraught with growing uncertainty andnumerous transactions costs. Were it not for the development of institutions to helpguide economic activity, economic actors would be completely lost in a world wherethe cost and uncertainty of obtaining information upon which to base economic de-cisions would virtually prohibit economic exchange. Institutions, therefore, necessar-ily evolve along with economic specialization and help transform the uncertaintyassociated with imperfect information into risk, thereby reducing transactions costs,and facilitating the capture of the potential gains from trade (North, 1990: 99-100).

In North’s most recent work, he proposes five elements underlying the processof institutional change and associated impact on economic performance: competi-tion, scarcity, incentives, historical context, and human perception (North, 2005: vii).As recognition of the importance of institutions has grown, more and more researchhas been emerging on their impact on economic performance.

The human perception component of institutional change has been the least ex-plored of the five components identified by North, but is perhaps the most impor-tant for understanding how institutions guide the economics and politics of NorthAmerican integration. Traditional models of decision-making, including rationalchoice and Herbert Simon’s “bounded rationality” (1997), assume a utilitarian form of

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THE INSTITUTIONS OF NAFTAESSAYS

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rationality whereby humans pursue their goals efficiently, and decision-making, then,becomes a simple maximization process with self-interest at its core. However,these models have failed to elucidate how human beings perceive and understand thechoices they confront.

This article makes three main claims. First is the basic claim that NAFTA is, andhas functioned as, a set of institutions. Second, this paper will argue that incorpo-rating the insights of psychology into how we perceive the rules of internationaltrade should be a more prominent factor in their design. The third claim is that theinsights of psychology and institutional economics should be even more prominentwithin contemporary policy debates over North American integration as policy-makers confront the challenges of post-9/11 security imperatives and their evidentlinkage with economics.

The balance of this paper will be structured into five parts, beginning with anoverview of scholarly thinking about what institutions are and how they functionalong the lines outlined by North above. Part II will graft this conceptual approachto institutions onto NAFTA itself and begin building the case for an approach to inter-national trade rules that more explicitly incorporates the consideration of institu-tions. Part III will add to the case for viewing NAFTA as a set of institutions througha review of empirical literature dealing with institutions and their effects, but alsoto argue for a closer examination of the human perception component of institution-al change. Part IV will turn explicitly to literatures in psychology and cognitive sci-ence dealing with perception and reasoning and argue that while North Americaninstitutions need more explicit consideration by scholars and public policy officials,so, too, does the psychology behind our interpretation of them. Finally, Part V willreturn to the North American framework, but this time in the context of institu-tional change since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that have meldedsecurity to economics in the NAFTA area.

PART I: WHAT ARE INSTITUTIONS?

The neoclassical economic model is comprised of many elements and makes numer-ous assumptions, but, at its core, it is all about choice under constraint (McCloskey,1996). Whether our level of analysis is the consumer, the firm, or heads of state, eachis confronted with a range of constraints, including scarcity, that shape the choicesets and structure decision-making. The constraints that shape our economic, social,and political decision-making are nearly everywhere we look and are comprised ofa series of rules (formal and informal), practices, customs, and heuristics (or rules

of thumb), and their enforcement mechanisms through which we cognitively inter-pret the disparate and myriad information we are confronted with each day.

The definition of institutions borrowed from Douglass North is useful in termsof directing our understanding of patterns of economic activity toward the manyhumanly devised constraints that structure that activity, but is vague in terms ofproviding us with a clear explanation of what institutions are, what they are not, orwhere to look for them. Engaging in a systematic analysis of institutions requiresthat we know what they are. North’s definition of institutions as informal constraints(sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct) and formal rules (con-stitutions, laws, and property rights), seems to suggest that institutions might befound everywhere. They are. Institutions are everywhere shaping our economicdecision-making. That they are such a ubiquitous –and influential– part of our econ-omy argues strongly for including them more explicitly alongside neoclassicaltheory as tools for understanding our economic system.

Classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo were among thefirst to point to the efficiency implications of specialization and the division of laborfor rising standards of living (Irwin, 1996). As economies shift from autarkic modesof production toward more sophisticated and impersonal forms of production, spe-cialization, and exchange, the ties of kinship underwriting the productive processthrough trust and familiarity lose their effectiveness in facilitating the process ofexchange. With specialization and exchange, economic decision-makers are confront-ed with a series of problems arising from the inter-temporal nature of exchange in-cluding asymmetrical information, opportunistic behavior, moral hazard, and adverseselection (Stiglitz, 2002; Carlos and Nicholas, 1990; Weingast, 1984; Macneil, 1978).

Scholars of institutional economics, such as Douglass North, have pointed ustoward the many ways in which institutions help structure and simplify our deci-sion-making and dramatically shape economic outcomes. Institutions come in manyforms including cultural traditions (Axelrod, 1986), formal constitutional rules,including the enforcement of contracts and property rights (Weingast and Marshall,1988; Macneil, 1978; De Soto, 2000; Pipes, 1999), informal agreements such as hand-shakes, or the powerful ties among family members (North, 1990).

Were it not for the development of institutions to help guide economic activity,economic actors would be completely lost in a world where the cost and uncer-tainty of obtaining information upon which to base economic decisions would vir-tually prohibit economic exchange. Institutions, therefore, necessarily evolve alongwith economic specialization and serve to transform the uncertainty associated withimperfect information into risk. This in turn reduces the impact of transactions costsand facilitates the capture of the potential gains from trade (North, 1991: 99-100).

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Yet, considerable ambiguity remains over what an institution actually is. Onepopular means of describing what institutions are makes them analogous to the for-mal rules of a football game (North, 2005). Two teams take the field bound by the samewritten rules, but may employ different strategies for winning the game. The rulesshape the way the game is played, but are not determinative of the outcome. Doug-lass North’s numerous attempts to simplify our thinking about institutions areintuitive, but somewhat limited in helping us transform institutions into subjects ofanalysis and investigation (Hodgson, 2006). This confusion is compounded by thewidespread use of “institution” by scholars to help describe different phenomena.In some instances, such as in contract law, scholars do not even use the term “insti-tutions,” referring to them instead as “contractual structures” or “relational patterns”(Macneil, 1974; 1978). In other disciplines, such as international relations, the term“institution” is used to refer to everything from normative behavior between states,regimes (Keohane, 1982), formal treaties (international contracts) (Guzman, 2005),or bricks-and-mortar organizations such as the bureaucracies of the EuropeanUnion or the United Nations (Pastor, 2001; Mearsheimer, 1994; Koremenos, Lipsonand Snidal, 2001).

These conceptual ambiguities have arguably inhibited the application of insti-tutional frameworks to many streams of social science inquiry, including interna-tional trade. Yet, scholars have begun to build upon Douglass North’s initial definitionto differentiate this particular brand of institutionalism from others. To begin, whileinstitutions both constrain and enable behavior, institutions are also much morethan common or coordinated behavior. They are mental representations that “enableordered thought, expectation, and action by imposing form and consistency on humanactivities” (Hodgson, 2006). John Searle pushes the conceptual precision behind insti-tutions further through what he terms “institutional facts.” According to Searle,institutional facts are observer dependent in that they depend on human conscious-ness for their existence and meaning. Hence, a US$20 bill exists as a physical piece ofpaper with numbers, some color, and the face of a famous person. However, it be-comes an institutional fact only because of the functions we collectively assign to it,namely its use as a medium of exchange or as a unit of value. Unlike the physicalcharacteristics of the bill, each of these is dependent on the mental representationhumans assign to it.

Other kinds of institutional facts are derived from similar kinds of observer-dependent constructions, such as property (Pipes, 1999; de Soto, 2000), the pricesystem (Hayek, 1945), or even passports. Few would argue that these institutionalfacts are unimportant in shaping human behavior, but in and of themselves, eachof them has no inherent function or status except that which humans assign to

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them. A US$20 bill has no inherent qualities derived from its physical structure. Yet,our ability to assign status and function to it –Searle calls this collective intention-ality– transforms the US$20 bill from being simply a piece of paper into somethingconsiderably more useful.

When we contrast these kinds of institutional facts with facts rooted in thephysical reality of our world, such as weights, distance, or gravity, we can see the dif-ference. Physical facts are observer independent, and would exist with or withoutthe presence of humans (Searle, 2005). In other words, institutional facts dependentirely upon people and the meaning and function they collectively attach to them,whereas facts as we observe them in the physical world exist independently of us.Searle argues that “the essential role of human institutions and the purpose of hav-ing institutions is not to constrain people as such, but, rather, to create new sorts ofpower relationships. Human relationships are, above all, enabling, because theycreate power” (Searle, 2005: 10). Institutions support, create, and guide a series ofduties, obligations, and requirements that both restrain and create incentives for dif-ferent behaviors. Consequently, observer-dependent institutions, such as money,require a significant degree of support from people to maintain them as institutionalfacts. In other words, we need to buy in. Doing so requires broad agreement aboutthe meaning, status, and function of such institutions. For that, we need the unique-ly human capacity for language that allows us to assign abstract meaning, status,and function to things that do not have obvious utility because of their physicality(Searle, 2005: 11-12). Paraphrasing Searle, without language, we would be unable toassign status. Without the ability to assign status, there would be no governance ofpower relationships via institutions, no frameworks into which we could place im-perfect information, no simplifying rules to help us mitigate the risk associatedwith inter-temporal exchange.

Institutions are often said to be analogous to the rules, say, of a football gameas above. However, in thinking about institutions as sets of rules, an important dis-tinction can be made between those rules that are constitutive and those that areregulative. Rules governing driving can be considered regulative. People would stilldrive in the absence of traffic rules, but the ensuing chaos would undoubtedly resultin more accidents. By contrast, constitutive rules generate behavior that is a directmanifestation of the rules themselves. Chess, money, property, government, and arange of professional sports, all exist by virtue of the underlying rule sets that ini-tiate behavior (Searle: 2005). As we will see below, the institutions of NAFTA are both.

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NAFTA Has Institutions?

Conceptual ambiguities regarding institutions as used broadly in the social sciencesare compounded in trying to apply these insights to international economics. Con-sider, for example, the pervasive use of the term of “rules” to describe the natureand function of institutions (Wise and Studer, 2007; Hufbauer and Schott, 2005;Rodriguez, Low and Kotschwar, eds., 1999). Depending on the academic discipline,rules, regimes, and norms are often used interchangeably. What is the difference be-tween a rule and a norm? Under what circumstances do rules become regimes? Andwhen, if ever, do we begin calling any of them institutions (Finnemore and Sikkink,1998; Keohane, 1984: 5-17)? In fact, some disciplines are so confident of the meaningof such terminology that our shared understanding of definitions is often assumed.Adding further to the conceptual difficulties is North’s own distinction betweenformal and informal institutions seemingly covering virtually every kind of humaninteraction (North, 1990; 2005). Scholars have argued that these categories are morethan semantic differences and have considerable conceptual importance, particularlywhere enforcement issues are concerned. For example, whereas norms involve a net-work of mutual beliefs rather than actual agreements, rules are the product of explicitagreements brought about by some authority, also implying a series of enforcementsanctions. Like rules, norms do involve approval or disapproval, but rules imply sanc-tions enforced by an agreed upon authority (Tuomela, 1995). In other words, normsand rules are similar, but differ importantly in terms of their enforcement. NAFTA isclearly more than a simple set of norms, primarily because of its formalized statusand enforcement mechanisms, and might arguably be thought of as a trilateral con-tract (Koh, 1997; Salacuse, 1990; Macneil, 1974; 1978). Yet, when can an agreementlike NAFTA graduate to the ranks of institutions as defined here, when the NAFTA areais so infamously said to be comparatively devoid of institutions (Pastor, 2001)?

North’s own definition of institutions as being composed of both formal andinformal varieties only adds to conceptual difficulties by suggesting institutionsgovern virtually every conceivable kind of human interaction. This may be the case,but as Hodgson (2006) has pointed out, the use of the term “formal” seems to implyrules that are codified in legal systems while “informal” evidently denotes thosethat are extra-legal, or even illegal. Hodgson points to further distinctions between“rules” and “constraints,” adding further confusion to the applicability of institution-al analysis to the understanding of economic performance. From a methodologicalpoint of view, focusing on formal rules as enshrined in a legal system is important,but may ultimately undervalue the importance a range of informal, but powerful,institutions that shape human behavior as well (Hodgson, 2006).

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However, one of the most important conceptual ambiguities in work on insti-tutions is the confusion over the differences between “institutions” and “organiza-tions.” Hodgson (2006) argues that North has been insufficiently clear about thedifferences. Yet, much of that ambiguity stems from the level at which, and lengthof time over which, North applies the analysis of institutions. North is concerned withbroad trends in economic and political change, some of which extend over a peri-od of several centuries (2005). Yet, North’s basic distinction between institutionsand organizations can be applied to micro- and macro-level analyses, as well as toboth long and short periods of time. The most important distinction between insti-tutions and organizations is actually the separation between individuals and therules governing their behavior. This is an ambiguity that also pervades the debateover the lack of institutionalization in NAFTA (Wise and Studer, 2008; Schwanen,2004; Pastor, 2001; Weintraub, 1994).

For clarity, we should look, as North (1990) does, to Ronald Coase (1937; 1960),who approached the structure of firms from the vantage point of transaction costseconomics. In essence, the size and structure of an organization, or firm, was a prod-uct of efforts to internalize transaction costs associated with contracting and produc-tion. Firms and organizations will simply try to make exogenous transaction costsendogenous. How firms and organizations do so depends on the “rules” or insti-tutions internal to the firm that are designed to manage endogenous governance. Inshort, institutions are readily identifiable within organizations such as firms. Firmgovernance, even among firms in the same sector, can vary significantly and havea significant impact on the relative performance of different firms. And, like insti-tutions anywhere else, institutions internal to the firm have a collective intentionalityto them that confer upon them a status and function within the organization, andare often constitutive of the very behavior they structure within the firm. Institu-tions are critical to, but separate from both organizations and the humans who workwithin them.

It might seem there is no direct parallel between the micro-level activities of theprofit maximizing firm trying to reduce transaction costs and the kind of activitywe see taking place as a result of NAFTA. Yet, applied to the macro-economies ofNorth America, the parallel comes into sharp relief. The Coase Theorem suggests tous a rationalization of transaction costs between firms and suppliers in the processof production. Internalizing some of those transaction costs through alterations toa firm’s structure and production processes suggests the growth of efficiencieswithin the firm. If we think of the NAFTA area as a kind of “firm” in this light, wecan see that NAFTA altered the structure of North American production by internal-izing a range of transaction costs that were once external to each of the three NAFTA

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countries. In other words, as NAFTA’s rules facilitated the reduction of tariffs andother trade barriers within North America, border measures faced by each countrywere effectively internalized within North America.

PART II: THE INSTITUTIONS OF NAFTA

Robert Pastor’s widely cited book on NAFTA is an evaluation of the merits and short-comings of two different integration models: the European Union and the emergingNorth American community anchored by NAFTA (Pastor, 2001). Pastor concludes, inpart, that, whereas the European Union is paralyzed by too many institutions, theNorth American community faces a different set of problems because it has too few.Pastor’s conception of institutions differs significantly from that posited here andmore closely resembles institutions as defined by scholars of international relations(norms, rules, regimes, conventions, and organizations). However, Pastor correctlynotes the absence of formal, permanent organizational structures in NAFTA. NAFTAcontains no permanent adjudicatory body or office staffed with officials from all threecountries. NAFTA is “run” out of each nation’s existing trade policy bureaucracies,disputes are handled on an ad-hoc basis, and there are few enforcement mecha-nisms other than the threat of retaliation (recall Tuomela, 1995).

The point is that while NAFTA lacks some of the formal organizational bodieswe most often associate with international institutions, even a cursory reading ofthe agreement makes clear that NAFTA is emphatically, and almost purely, a set of institu-tions as defined by North and amplified by scholars like Searle and Hodgson.

The literature on recent North American economic development is full of nar-ratives about the politics of integration, as well as economic analysis of integration’seffects. There are countless references in the academic and public policy literature,as well as the popular press, about how NAFTA has reshaped the way in which wethink about economic activity in North America, how NAFTA has restructured com-mercial activity, and how the agreement fostered drives toward increased efficien-cy and productivity. We regularly hear a wide range of pronouncements about theimpact of NAFTA on a variety of non-economic issues ranging from social policy tosovereignty. In short, we can find numerous anecdotal examples of how NAFTA hassupposedly reshaped the way we conceive of North American relations in both eco-nomics and a range of other policy areas. Yet, while many would concede that NAFTAhas been profoundly important in shaping the way we think about North Americaneconomic issues, there has been virtually nothing scholarly written about the waysin which NAFTA, as a set of institutions, has actually been responsible for it.

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The Rules of the NAFTA Game

We might usefully begin thinking about NAFTA in these terms by considering theoft-overlooked preamble of the agreement which promises NAFTA will “strengthenthe special bonds of friendship and cooperation” among all three countries. While thepreamble is not a particularly substantive part of NAFTA, we see in it a number ofthe characteristics pointed to by Hodgson in terms of “enabling ordered thought”about trade in North America, “shaping expectations,” and by imposing “form andconsistency” on our thinking about trade among NAFTA partners. The preambledoes all of this by also promising to reduce uncertainty about the broader trilateralrelationship among NAFTA partners by extending the “shadow of the future” wellinto the distance. In other words, the agreement promises to alleviate uncertaintiesregarding the inherently inter-temporal nature of trade by saying that NAFTA will bemore than a one-off exchange among the parties. The Preamble also sets out a num-ber of principles that are both evaluative and prescriptive in setting the bounds ofnormative behavior.

Some of NAFTA’s most important institutions are found in Chapter One and thestatement of objectives in Article 102, where the norms of national treatment, mostfavored nation treatment, and transparency are enshrined in the agreement. All threeof these concepts rank among those that regularly litter the pages of scholarly liter-ature and the popular press, but are often taken for granted as underlying normssupporting institutions. National treatment has been especially controversial for some,but profoundly important for institutional stability facilitating economic activity inNorth America. Applied throughout the agreement, national treatment ensures thatthe goods, services, and investments of firms from a NAFTA party will not face dis-crimination due to national origin. The related principle of most favored nation treat-ment (MFN) required that each NAFTA party extend to each other the most favorabletreatment each gives to non-NAFTA countries. Combined with a commitment to trans-parency, these three principles alone contribute to the reduction of uncertainty andtransactions cost, and enhance the stability of property rights and the ease of contract-ing across national borders.

The point is that each of these principles, and the broader agreement as a whole,embody the regulative, evaluative, prescriptive elements identified earlier. Na-tional treatment, MFN, and transparency are regulative in that they shape patternsof economic interaction that would exist independent of those principles. Bothnational treatment and MFN are evaluative in that they set benchmarks againstwhich discrimination can be assessed and prescriptive in setting behavioral expec-tations among NAFTA parties with respect to non-NAFTA countries. These principles

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are also constitutive in that firms which might previously have avoided NAFTA part-ner markets due to reservations about discrimination or transparency see theseprinciples enshrined throughout NAFTA and elect instead to service partner markets.In other words, NAFTA actually generates the activity it also regulates, evaluates, andprescribes. The most obvious example of this kind of constitutive behavior is tradediversion, wherein NAFTA area preferences stimulate trade between producers thatare not necessarily the lowest cost producers.

Moreover, these same principles can also be cast in terms of institutions versusinstitutional facts. National treatment, MFN, and the concept of transparency are allobserver-dependent, and therefore institutions as described by Searle. If each of theseprinciples is going to be regulative, evaluative, prescriptive, and constitutive, theyneed the collective assignment of status and function. In other words, each of theNAFTA parties needs to see eye-to-eye in terms of what the agreement means as muchas with what it says.

Do We All Agree? Chapter 11 and Chapter 19

NAFTA is a physical document full of words that has no inherent value or function.Neither the pages, nor the words written on them, actually do anything. Researchon norm development by international relations scholars has also highlighted theevaluative and prescriptive nature of norms, rules, and regimes (Finnemore andSikkink, 1998). NAFTA satisfies these criteria as well, facilitating determinations offairness through its dispute settlement mechanisms, and defining the outlines of ex-pected and acceptable behaviors in the conduct of international trade. However,without complete agreement on the status and function NAFTA’s provisions carry,many institutional facts would cease, as might NAFTA itself as a set of institutions.

Two areas of emerging disagreement on this question illustrate this elementwell: Chapter 11 and Chapter 19. Chapter 11 of NAFTA was originally designed tostrengthen the legal protections afforded private investors as they operated in hostcountries. Traditional protections offered under customary international law fre-quently left foreign investors subject to the discriminatory whims of host countrygovernments, periodically resulting in outright expropriation (Reif, 2004; Graham,2000; Salacuse, 1990). Given the history of Mexico’s bouts with economic nationalism,including expropriation, NAFTA negotiators assumed it would be the main target ofChapter 11 investor-state dispute resolution. However, in addition to the regulative,evaluative, and prescriptive nature of Chapter 11, the provisions have also becomehighly constitutive of legal proceedings launched against all three countries. In fact,

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of the 29 separate Chapter 11 arbitration cases that had been filed through fall 2007, 4have been against Canada, 12 against Mexico, and 13 against the United States.

Interestingly, virtually none of these cases allege that there was an outrightnationalization or expropriation of property as we think of it historically. Instead,suits creatively allege forms of discriminatory treatment in the application of regu-latory measures imposed by states that are tantamount to expropriation of privateproperty. It is remarkable that in the nearly 15 years since NAFTA began its imple-mentation, there have only been 29 Chapter 11 suits. The twenty-nine Chapter 11 casesrepresent legal responses to a changed set of incentives brought about by NAFTA andby the lack of agreement among state parties and private interests over whatChapter 11 means rather than simply what it says.

A similar set of problems over the collective intentionality behind status andfunction hovers over Chapter 19. The long-running Canada-U.S. softwood lumberagreement has exposed important differences in the meaning and function Canadaand the United States assign to Chapter 19. Chapter 19 shifted litigation over traderemedy law (anti-dumping and countervailing duties) away from domestic courtproceedings and into ad hoc bi-national review panels (Hufbauer and Schott, 2005;Macrory, 2002). Each country would maintain their respective trade remedy laws,but Canada and Mexico hoped the shift to a bi-national panel system would speeddispute mechanisms and make them more impartial (Hart, Dymond and Robertson,1994: 379-380). However, the bitterness of the softwood dispute has exposed signif-icant differences in how Canada and the United States have come to see the statusand function of Chapter 19 (Anderson, 2006).

The United States has tended toward a narrowly constructed interpretation ofChapter 19 provisions flowing from both the limited nature of NAFTA as a shallowform of integration, and the broad U.S. preference for preserving sovereignty lati-tude in international agreements. In practice, this means ad hoc panels may, at Ca-nadian request, review the actions of U.S. agencies in adjudicating domestic law.However, panel rulings will not be allowed to infringe upon U.S. legislative pre-rogatives. By contrast, Canada has come to see the Chapter 19 provisions more ex-pansively in terms of adjudicatory and enforcement powers. Specifically, Canadahoped that Chapter 19 would function similar to domestic court systems and act asan arbiter of disputes (Anderson, 2006; Gagne, 2000, 2003).

The apparent divergence between Canada and the United States over the sta-tus and function they each assign to Chapter 19 might reasonably be applied toNAFTA more broadly. Canadians have widely come to see U.S. willingness to adhereto the “spirit” of the agreement rather than just the “letter” as a litmus test for Canada-U.S. relations writ large.

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Cognitive Dissonance?

North American economic integration has been the subject of extensive analysis byscholars, heavily dominated by both economists and political scientists. Economists,in particular, have been prolific contributors to the debate over economic integrationthrough their analyses of the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement,as well as projections about the impact of potential successor agreements (this is avast literature, but see Hufbauer and Schott, 2005; Pastor, 2001; Dobson, 2002). Inspite of the considerable economic evidence linking NAFTA to real gains in exportgrowth, GDP, and standards of living in North America, there is emerging evidenceof growing discrepancies between what NAFTA actually says on paper, how it oper-ates in practice, and what the agreement has come to “mean” on a variety of non-economic fronts (the softwood dispute being one component of that evidence).

All of this is supportive of the necessity of viewing NAFTA as a set of institutionsas policy makers consider the future of North American integration. This will be-come even more evident as we turn to the important insights from microeconom-ics and psychology that reinforce the simple idea that “institutions matter.”

PART III: INSTITUTIONS AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

Transaction costs, uncertainty, contractual relations, and property rights –the domainof institutional economics– all, whether we always appreciate it or not, underliecontemporary discussions of North American integration. There is an importantand burgeoning literature on economic development growing out of the analysis ofinstitutions, which simply posits that institutions matter for economic performance(De Soto, 2000; Ferguson, 2004; Rodrik, 2006; Rodrik, Subramanian and Trebbi,2004; Hall and Jones 1999; Glaeser et al., 2004). The analysis of institutions and theirimpact on economic performance reaches into literatures including industrial orga-nization and the theory of the firm (Coase, 1937; Bolton and Scharfstein, 1998; Demsetz,1997; Hart and Moore, 1990; Kronman, 1985), the development of property and con-tract law (Macneil, 1978; 1974), governance in domestic political bodies (Moe, 1991;Weingast and Marshall, 1988), and a simple neoclassical rationale for the integra-tion of the state itself (North, 1981; Alesina and Spolaore, 1997).

One especially fertile area for the analysis of institutions has been in develop-ment economics, and in particular the work of Peruvian economist Hernando deSoto, who has argued that one of the principal failures of capitalism in most regionsof the world outside the developed West is the inability to raise the capital so key

to development. For many in the West who have become accustomed to under-standing how our economic system functions while forgetting why it functions,solutions to the challenges of development amount to simplistically trying to repli-cate Western modes of law and organization in developing countries through pre-scriptive formulas such as the Washington Consensus (Williamson, 1990; Rodrik,2006). When such methods fail, explanations often include spurious references tocultural or religious differences rather than challenging the policy prescriptionsthemselves (De Soto, 2000: 3-4). One of the great mysteries of development is thedivergence in economic performance among countries (Rodrik, Subramanian andTrebbi, 2004; Dollar and Kraay, 2002; Glaeser, et al., 2004; Easterly and Levine, 2003;Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, 2001) even among those with ostensibly similarlegal and political structures. As De Soto (2000) vividly demonstrates, one of thecentral problems facing developing countries is the failure of their institutionalstructures to provide the basis for shifting the substantial capital that exists in theirextra-legal economies into the legal economy.

Recent empirical evidence on the merits of institutions suggests they are nec-essary, but not sufficient, elements in economic development (Rodrik, 2006; Rodrik,Subramanian and Trebbi, 2004). In fact, recent work on property rights in Latin Amer-ica suggests there remain important limitations to institutions such as land titles infreeing some of De Soto’s dead capital (Field and Torerro, 2006; Galian and Schar-grodsky, 2006).

This growing body of evidence in development scholarship exploring both thehow and why behind the functioning of economic systems stands in sharp contrastto the lack of scholarly attention paid to the development of macroeconomic insti-tutions in developed countries. One exception here has been the work of Beth andRobert Yarbrough, who in the late 1980s tried to apply some of the insights of micro-level work on institutions to international trade (1985; 1986; 1987a; 1987b). Mostintriguingly, the Yarbroughs argued that institutional structures such as the GeneralAgreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) operate much like a private contract by de-lineating the terms of the relationships that develop among the membership, as wellas how the GATT transforms uncertainty in trade relations into risk by managing theopportunistic behavior associated with the kinds of inter-temporal exchange involvedin international trade (1987b), not unlike the ordering of relations between privateparties through contracts (Macneil, 1978; 1974), or the same kind of broad manage-ment of risk alluded to earlier when we begin viewing NAFTA as a trilateral contract.

Interestingly, while the voluminous literature on NAFTA includes countless analy-ses on the merits of rules-based trade and the relative merits of institutionalizationin North America, particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, no

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attention has been given to how the rules of NAFTA shape economic activity beyondstandard econometric analyses of growth of trade and investment flows. Even here,the measurement challenges associated with directly tying NAFTA to the growth intrade and investment flows have been the source of some debate (Studer and Wise,2008: 27-75; Hufbauer and Schott, 2005; Weintraub, 2004: 3-20). It is clear from thenumerous public opinion surveys and academic studies focused on the possibilityof a nascent North American identity that NAFTA is shaping how Canadians, Amer-icans, and Mexicans think about a range of issues, much of it in favor of closer eco-nomic ties (Bennett, 2004). Yet, NAFTA is also having an impact on how NorthAmericans think about economics beyond the typical scholarly considerations ofhow many widgets cross borders, the convergence of values, or the emergence of atri-national identity.

PART IV: HUMAN PERCEPTION AND INSTITUTIONS,PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITION

Among the most basic of findings of psychologists and cognitive scientists has beenthe tendency for humans to try to order their complex world through simplifyingheuristics, or rules of thumb (Simon, 1979; 1959; Baron, 2000). In economics, thisfunction is partially served by the many institutional structures that help guide eco-nomic decision-making in what would otherwise be a world characterized by per-vasive uncertainty and opportunism. Institutions such as the price system, systemsof property rights, and the rule of law provide us with guidelines through whichwe process the imperfect information around us. Under the neoclassical model, wefrequently talk about the “profit maximizing” firm under conditions of perfectcompetition. If competition and information were perfect, the precise structure ofeconomic organizations like firms would be irrelevant for economic performance(Coase, 1937). Were we in a world of perfectly competitive conditions, we couldconfidently talk about a zero-transaction-cost world where markets instantly estab-lished market clearing price and quantities for supply and demand and we couldinstantly contract with each other for virtually all forms of exchange. In otherwords, in such a world, economic decision-making would devolve into straightfor-ward maximization problems instead of being fraught with uncertainty and risk.Hence, because we live in a world characterized by high transaction costs, imper-fect information, and considerable uncertainty, it only makes sense to talk about the“profit maximizing” firm in the context of that maximization being a firm’s goalrather than an outcome.

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Rational Choice Institutionalism

In both the economics and public choice literatures, rational choice modeling, notablygame theory, has been a popular method of identifying the key factors motivatingeconomic and political decision-making (Munk, 2001; Axelrod, 1980; Hoppman,1998; Thompson, 2001). The debate over rational choice theory has been raging inpolitical science for some time and has been joined by those investigating the impactof institutions in areas such as economic and political development. Of particularinterest is new research into the “informal” side of North’s definition of institutions;namely, the sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct that alsoshape our decision-making. Critics of rational-choice approaches to institutionalanalysis point out that it is often informal sets of institutions that undergird andsupport the formal structures that are so frequently the focus of empirical studies(Helmke and Levitsky, 2004). In fact, in order to fully understand the “institutionalscaffolds” (North, 2005) that so deeply structure our decision-making, we need toapproach investigations of institutional development from both a formal and infor-mal point of view. As Weyland has also argued, rational choice institutionalism’s focuson self-interest as the prime motivating force for decision-making has led investi-gators toward incorrect inferences about actor preferences. Specifically, researchershave either inductively inferred actor preferences by looking at their actions or de-ductively inferred them by looking at the incentive structures set up by institutions(Weyland, 2002). In either case, argues Weyland, researchers miss key factors thatshape both political outcomes and institutional development, particularly in regionssuch as Latin America and Africa where formal institutional development is weak.

Even with respect to the study of formal institutions, the identification of pref-erences among decision-makers is a tremendous challenge. Within neoclassical eco-nomics, such preferences are said to be everywhere. The assumption of rationalityby decision-makers posits that they will make choices that will allow them to reacha higher level of ordinal utility. The problem is that the use of ordinal utility curvestells us very little about the actual preference sets of decision-makers.

Irrationality and Mental Models

Donald McCloskey has reminded us that neoclassical economics is really all aboutchoice under a series of constraints (1996). These constraints come in many forms,but include limited time and imperfect information. The reality of the human con-dition is that individuals have limited computational capacity and are able only to

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selectively search through all possible alternatives or evaluate their consequences.In addition, the search for information is incomplete, often contains inaccuracies, isbased upon partial information (i.e. the role of prior knowledge or levels of expert-ise), and often terminates with the discovery of satisfactory, although not necessarilyoptimal, courses of action (Simon, 1985). Herbert Simon has argued that the self-interest assumption in human rationality breaks down amidst the range of othermotives for human decision-making, including significant, even necessary, levels ofaltruism (1993; 1991).

In order to reach strong conclusions about economic activity, the neoclassicaleconomic model makes a number of simplifying assumptions about decision-mak-ers, including a basic self-interested rationality. Yet, even economists have chal-lenged this broad notion of rationality as the basis for economic activity, arguingthat the “market” always functions rationally through the efficient allocation ofcapital and other factors of production, while individuals frequently engage in allkinds of sub-optimal behavior (Becker, 1962).

The disciplines of psychology and cognitive science have pointed to addition-al weaknesses in assuming rationality on the part of individuals within a rationalmarket. For many kinds of observed behavior, we might conclude that we are wit-nessing a kind of satisficing behavior resulting from constraints on time and infor-mation.1 Yet, psychology and cognitive science have suggested additional weaknessesin this assumption, including an inability to apply self-interested rationality withthe information we have before us. In fact, the rationality assumption has been underattack by psychologists for more than 50 years. Herbert Simon, in his influential1955 article “A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice,” argued from empirical evi-dence that individuals are just sufficiently rational to achieve some minimum level ofa desired outcome, but not sufficiently rational to achieve some maximum level of adesired outcome (Simon, 1955). Studies of human reasoning have even identifiedinstances in which information relevant for making self-interested assessments isignored (although not intentionally), as well as instances in which differences in themere presentation of information influence our decision processes. Further, underconditions of uncertainty, human decision-making is strongly influenced by pre-

1 Satisficing (a portmanteau of “satisfy” and “suffice”) is a decision-making strategy which attempts to meetcriteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution. A satisficing strategy may often be (near)optimal if the costs of the decision-making process itself, such as the cost of obtaining complete informa-tion, are considered in the outcome calculus.

The word “satisfice” was coined by Herbert Simon. He pointed out that human beings lack the cog-nitive resources to maximize: we usually do not know the relevant probabilities of outcomes, we can rarelyevaluate all outcomes with sufficient precision, and our memories are weak and unreliable. A more real-istic approach to rationality takes into account these limitations: This is called bounded rationality.

conceived stereotypes, beliefs, and personal experiences into which we regularly tryto place new and imperfect information.

In short, the use of heuristics (rules of thumb) allows us to simplify a complexworld, but can also lead to important errors of bias in the decision-making process(Tversky and Kahneman, 1974; 1981). By themselves, the limitations on cognitiveprocesses suggested by psychology and cognitive science give us pause to recon-sider the role of individual rationality within the neoclassical model. These limitsrender human decision-making intendedly rational but only limitedly so.

Over the past decade, researchers have begun to incorporate the insights ofpsychologists and cognitive scientists into analyses of the ways in which institu-tions shape our social, political, and economic lives. One early effort by Denzau andNorth from 1994 argued that humans developed and made extensive use of “men-tal models” as a means to simplify and order the uncertain world around them.From these models flowed a series of beliefs and ideologies concerning the worldaround us that served as heuristics for decision-making.

In order to understand decision making under conditions of uncertainty, we must under-stand the relationships of the mental models that individuals construct to make sense outof the world around them, the ideologies that evolve from such constructions, and theinstitutions that develop in a society to order interpersonal relationships (Denzau andNorth, 1994: 4).

More recently, North has suggested that explorations of human neurologicalprocesses by cognitive scientists may hold the keys to unlocking the ways in whichhumans learn about, structure, and adapt to the complexities of the world aroundus (North, 2005). North argues further that the institutional “scaffolds” that humansocieties have created are a complex product of cultural development, our individualand collective consciousness, and the richness of a society’s artifactual heritage –beliefs,institutions, tools, instruments, and technology. This heritage plays immediate rolesin shaping the choices within societies (North, 2005: 23-65). The more complex thescaffolds are, North suggests, the more successful a society is likely to have been intransforming pervasive uncertainty into risk (North, 2005: 36). However, as Northhimself concedes, neuroscience is still a long way from uncovering the mechanismsby which our cognitive processes begin erecting these scaffolds (North, 2005: 38).

If how institutions shape our individual and collective decision-making is tiedto elements of consciousness deeply embedded in widely held belief systems andculture, then looking at institutions in terms of the incentive structures they set outis as important as what we think those institutions mean. In other words, the sub-

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jective meaning of the institutions we construct may be as important as the concreteincentive structures institutions actually generate.

PART V: POST-9/11 NAFTA AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE

The dynamics of meaning underlying institutions and cognitive processes haverisen in prominence within the NAFTA area. As the Agreement has matured the incen-tives set by its institutional structures in areas such as dispute settlement have gen-erated expectations on the part of all three countries about the conduct and resolutionof future disputes. As a result of a couple of high-profile disputes among the NAFTAparties, namely Canada-U.S. softwood lumber and the U.S.-Mexico trucking ser-vices dispute, fissures have emerged between what NAFTA means versus what NAFTAactually says. The long-running softwood lumber dispute is the quintessential casein which the advent of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUFTA) and NAFTAwere seen by many Canadians as bringing about the increasing application of therule of law to such disputes. It was hoped by some that impartial arbitral panels underthe CUFTA and NAFTA would facilitate the reduction of asymmetries of power and therole of politics in determining who was right and who was wrong in bilateral dis-putes (Anderson, 2006).

Yet, over the past 15 years of NAFTA, Canadians and Americans have come toview aspects of NAFTA very differently. In Canada, the softwood lumber dispute hasbecome a litmus test of Canada-U.S. relations writ large. In the context of this narrowdispute, NAFTA itself is increasingly depicted in the media as a contractual arrange-ment that the United States regularly violates. For Canadians, NAFTA has becomea set of institutions infused within all the obligations, written and unwritten, thatflow from contracts. Yet, like a contract, NAFTA’s design has involved fights over themeaning and purpose of every clause.

In short, NAFTA may have come to symbolize a range of things in Canada-U.S.relations that the agreement itself was never designed to resolve. Furthermore, it maybe that the agreement has taken on a symbolic life of its own that in institutional termstranscends its narrow wording and has become part of the “scaffolding” that hasbeen erected in North America.

All of this brings us back to the final implementation of NAFTA in January 2008and the countless panels, articles, and political pundits talking about “next steps”in North American integration. In the time since NAFTA began its implementationphase in 1994, the debate over what was next was largely oriented around dramat-ically deeper institutional arrangements along the lines suggested by neoclassical

trade theory. Yet, the intellectual case for and against unions (customs, monetary, orpolitical) in North America has been replaced since September 11, 2001 by a differ-ent set of imperatives linking security to economics (Anderson and Sands, 2007).If, over the past 15 years, North America had been moving toward a customs or mone-tary union, we would have likely seen a debate similar to that seen during the NAFTAdebate, over the effects of liberalization and integration as predicted by neoclassicaltrade theory. And, like the NAFTA debate, it would have been one was centered (andcorrectly so), on how many more widgets were being produced and traded in NorthAmerica or on how a single currency was making their production more efficient.

Yet, as this paper has argued, this would have been only part of the story ofinstitutional change in North America. These debates never took place, and insteadhave been supplanted by a set of imperatives aimed at reconciling the need forenhanced security while advancing the economic openness that facilitates growth.The North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) launched in 2005aims to do this, not through a major negotiation, but through an incremental processof institutional development addressing more than 300 different issue areas (Ander-son and Sands, 2007). The range of post-9/11 institutional change affecting economicactivity in North America has been piecemeal and profound. It has ranged from therestructuring of federal bureaucracies in Canada (Public Safety) and the United States(Department of Homeland Security) to the reorientation of U.S. immigration andcustoms inspection procedures that have altered the incentives for the movement ofgoods, capital, and people within North America (Anderson, and Sands, 2007).

In part because these institutional changes do not involve the major political ororganizational shifts that a customs or monetary union would entail, we have fewof the predictive guideposts offered by neoclassical trade theory as to the impact ofinstitutional change. The politics of trade liberalization in the past decade suggestthat a major new integration project, such as a customs or monetary union, is not in theoffing any time soon. Since more ad hoc, piecemeal approaches to North Americaare more likely for the time being, a robust research agenda focused on how insti-tutional change in NorthAmerica is constructing the scaffolds that shape how we thinkabout economic relations seems prudent. Yet, with a few exceptions, our analysesremain focused on how many widgets are crossing borders.

CONCLUSION

In the 15 years since NAFTA was concluded, public policy in North America has gen-erally focused on next steps in the integration process. It was not a question of if,

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but rather when and how, North America would continue down the path towardgreater degrees of integration. The parameters of the public debate have largelyswirled around the “benefits” that have accrued to all three countries. The numberof widgets that cross borders is important, but fails to consider how NAFTA has insti-tutionalized governance by helping construct the cognitive scaffolds that shape theway we think about economic relations in North America. NAFTA is almost entirely aset of institutions. The contrasts between the limited integrative ambition of the NorthAmerican economic space and that in the European Union are vast. Nevertheless,NAFTA has facilitated a shift toward a more cohesive North American community thatcontinues to deepen. NAFTA’s provisions are almost entirely observer-dependent andinvolve the collective (trilateral) assignment of status and function to make themwork. Institutions have longevity only to the extent that we can collectively assignstatus and function to them. Without this collective intentionality, institutions fallapart and cease to shape the incentive structures by which we make decisions.

In recent years, several high profile disputes have suggested divergences in thestatus and function each NAFTA country assigns to the dispute settlement mechanismsnarrowly, and perhaps NAFTA more broadly. As security and economics become in-creasingly intertwined, those contemplating next steps in North American integra-tion may be missing the mark in pursuit of customs or monetary unions. Bordersare important –and obvious– places to focus policy makers’ attention. However, ifwe can begin thinking about North American governance in terms of institutions asoutlined here, we could move the debate over “next steps” in North American inte-gration away from dramatic and controversial projects such as customs or mone-tary unions, away from narrow debates over how many widgets cross the border,or how long it takes them to do so, and toward the design of institutional scaffoldsreflective of how people actually think about economic relations in North America.

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